Naught or not?
naught is a pronoun meaning “Nothing”; not is an adverb meaning “Negates the meaning of the modified verb”. Use naught as a pronoun and not as an adverb. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) not is about 5,370 times as common as naught.
What is the difference between naught and not?
| naught | not | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | pronoun, noun | adverb, conjunction, interjection, noun |
| Meaning | Nothing | Negates the meaning of the modified verb To no degree And not |
| Example | Naught can come of this, you mark my words | Did you take out the trash? – No, I did not. I do not think it was my turn, was it? |
| Forms | nought | none |
| Pronunciation | /nɔːt/ /noːt/ /nɔt/ | /nɒt/ /nɔt/ /nɑt/ |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words | 4,898 times per million words |
Sources: naught and not in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of naught and not
naught
- 1
Nothing
Naught can come of this, you mark my words
- 2
USdatedAlternative spelling of nought
not
- 1
Negates the meaning of the modified verb
Did you take out the trash? – No, I did not. I do not think it was my turn, was it?
- 2
And not
I wanted a plate of shrimp, not a bucket of chicken
- 3
slangUsed to indicate that the previous phrase was meant sarcastically or ironically
Near-synonyms: I don't think; psych; bender (obsolete, UK)
- 4
An instance of using the word “not”; a negation or denial
- 5
A unary operation on logical values that changes true to false, and false to true
- 6
Abbreviation of notice
Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc
- 7
To no degree
That is not red; it's green
- 8
Alternative letter-case form of NOT (“unary operation on logical values that changes true to false, and false to true”)
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, naught or not?
naught appears about once in every 1 million words; not 4,898 times per million words.
naught about once in every 1 million wordsnot 4,898 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search naught vs not?
“naught vs not” is searched about 90 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“not vs naught”, “naught or not”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.